[Deck] BZK Stax (Anti-Goyf Edition)

[emidln]

Since everyone else's stax decks end up being radically different from mine, I'm just going to start calling mine bzk stax. This is the anti-goyf edition, brought about by a recent dominance of goyfs.

This is inspired by the Stax @ 2 thread that I saw, but thought was implemented poorly. The Words of Wilding got me thinking though:

// bzk stax "anti-goyf edition"
// Manabase:
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Taiga
1 Stomping Ground
2 Wooded Foothills
4 Mox Diamond

// Anti-aggro Manabase:
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Barbarian Ring
2 Maze of Ith

// LD Elements:
4 Wasteland
1 Ghost Quarter

// Land Recursion:
4 Crucible of Worlds
2 Life from the Loam

// The Engine:
4 Sylvan Library
3 Words of Wilding
3 Exploration

// Staxish Stuff:
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Smokestack
4 Ensnaring Bridge

// Sideboard:
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Pithing Needle
3 Aether Flash
4 Rolling Earthquake

Now, I know this is radically different, so bear with me

The Engine:

This is where it starts. Sylvan Library is utterly ridiculous in this deck. It allows for finding pretty much anything you want, produces ridiculous card advantage under Words of Wilding or Smokestack, and saves your ass with Ensnaring Bridge. Words of Wilding serves as anti-aggro, win conditions, Smokestack fodder (allowing truely large Smokestacks), and ensnaring bridge manipulation (allowing to to skip draws until you have an appropriate large army of bears, all while defending against anything small enough to attack you). Exploration allows for extra Smokestack fodder, as well as card advantage letting you stare down LD, explode out, and turbo lock.

Staxish Stuff:

Smokestack is obvious. The symmetrical card is the most unsymmetrical I've seen it since Time Vault was legal. There are so many combos in here to ramp this up to 2 (or more) and keep it, that I'm still noticing the play situations.

Sphere of Resistance is less obvious. It's an easier turn 1 play, and much more difficult to work around for SI/TES. Furthermore, it really taxes the manalight manabase of Threshold, which is a deck I hate with a passion. This still lets you create locks with Smokestack, although less solid than with Trinisphere.

Ensnaring Bridge is a card that has received a considerable spicing up with the addition of Words of War, more library, and Exploration. Now you can play out your hand faster and keep it empty until you want to kill.

Land Recursion:

6 ways are better than 4. Additionally, Loam puts stuff in your yard that you can use. Incidentally, it also enables Barbarian Ring. Loam is really good.

LD Elements:

It's now possible to hardlock Threshold and Landstill with Exploration/Waste/Ghost Quarter. I've done it.

Anti-aggro Manabase:

This is lifted straight from AT1 with Maze of Ith thrown in for good measure. A little maze action is pretty cool against decks packing few win conditions and a lot of pressure. Threshold also can't get rid of it and will be forced to needle it and leave other stuff alone.

The Manabase:

Stomping Grounds over a Mountain: We need green mana, now more than ever. Mox Diamond is now an even more integral part of the manabase, and is always castable thanks to the increased lands in the deck.

The sideboard:

I simply wanted to beat Goblins. Aether Flash is pushing it on our red count, but it's so retarded that I have to have it. Rquake, Needle, and Chalice are pretty obvious.

I'm still playing around with this, but I'm liking what I see. I might try adding in some Crop Rotations next at the expense of looking a bit more like 5c Eternal Garden.

Testing results up next...

[Bane of the Living]

Your combo matchup looks like it hurts alot. All you have is Sphere of Resistance. No 3sphere, no Chalice, no Ghostly Prison against EtW. Do you just mulligan to the SoR or go to game two?

[emidln]

Your combo matchup looks like it hurts alot. All you have is Sphere of Resistance. No 3sphere, no Chalice, no Ghostly Prison against EtW. Do you just mulligan to the SoR or go to game two?

Actually, I can play a Smokestack turn 2 several ways, as well as empty my hand for ensnaring bridge as early as turn 2/3 very easily against ETW. It's not amazing (in fact, it's not favorable remotely game 1), but it's not unwinnable. Additionally, I was able to lock TES out of the game with turn 1 exploration into tomb -> SoR, into turn 2 Crucible + waste, so it appears that this route is available to supplement the turbo bridge strategy (and just pray they can't go tendrils game 1). Part of the reason for looking at Crop Rotation is to increase virtual numbers of Tabernacles that I would play as part of the Crop Rotation package.

Finally, if you do survive to turn 4, Words of Wilding or a Smokestack can dominate the matchup rather quickly. Still, the general idea is to avoid Storm combo if possible.

[Silverdragon]

Right from the moment when you told me about the Words tech I tried to build this deck but I never got a list of 75 cards together that I liked so I kept testing with other already developed Stax lists.
I'm glad you released your current list but I think it's far from optimal. Ramping Smokestack to ridiculous amounts sounds fun but aside from other decks with Exploration I can't imagine where it would be necessary. Most of the time Goblins has big problems with all those bears already and against Combo you'd rather have a clock too. Threshold and Fish are in trouble even if you only manage to ramp the Smokestack to 1 so it seems overkill. Dedicated controldecks try to keep Smokestack off the board too so again it doesn't matter much whether you could pump it to 1 or 4.
Imho you should replace the Mazes with Trinisphere or Chalice. They are good against Tarmogoyf but again it feels like overkill to me.

[outsideangel]

I feel like cutting Exploration for Chalice MD is definitely the right call. It doubles your relevant cards vs. combo and is also basically a must-counter vs. Threshold.

Have you tried Uba Mask anywhere in there?

[HdH_Cthulhu]

Play more fetchlands instead of things like Stomping ground! And play some basic lands!
Fetchland + crucible = engine
Fetchland + crucible + exploration = turbo engine

[ThoseWhoFearTomorrow]

I would definitely suggest trying Crop Rotations like you said. You could go down to 1 Maze and add 1 Tabernacle as well. If the Tabernacle becomes a problem for yourself, just waste it/sac it to rotation or smokestack.

[Sanguine Voyeur]

First off, ha, Smokestack at fourteen.

Secondly, are the Taigas just for sideboard Æther Flash and Earthquake?